If you think starting a business online or bringing your
brick-and-mortar business to the Internet can simply be done by
inputting a few HTML codes and some clip art, think again. The
Internet may be the wave of the future for business, but it
involves a lot more than just putting up a flashy Web site. As in
all business ventures, knowing how to manage your Web site
is key.

In Managing The Web-Based Enterprise by
Jesse Feiler, software director of Philmont Software Mill, the
author introduces you to the world of Web-based enterprises and
offers tips on how to make sure yours runs smoothly. Read on to
find out more about what exactly a Web-based enterprise is and how
you can effectively maintain and manage it.

Entrepreneur.com: What is a
Web-based enterprise?

Jesse Feiler: There are two
definitions. The one most people are comfortable with is something
like Amazon.com, an enterprise that uses the Web as its lifeblood.
The other definition of a Web-based enterprise is any organization
with a Web site. [If yours fits the second description,] your Web
site has to be supported the same way in which an enterprise is. It
needs to be staffed, maintained and managed. The book addresses
both sides. It's for companies that want to see how to go from
where they are today, which is often a brick-and-mortar
environment, to integrating the Web into their business. It's
also for companies that have a little Web site and have a sense it
needs something more.

"Stop
and think about what it is you want to do in a real business sense
before you play with the technology."

Entrepreneur.com: How should
this Web-based enterprise be organized?

Feiler: One of the things I
talk about in the book that I think is very important is mission,
scope and place. People are pretty comfortable talking about the
mission of a Web site-what it is you're trying to do-but they
usually stop there. It's very important to go on in terms of
scope, for example. Who are you dealing with? Are you addressing
yourself to people in a regional area or are you addressing
yourself to pet lovers and veterinarians? Who is your audience?
Mission is what you do, scope is how much of it you do, and place
is the trickiest part of them all. In the brick-and-mortar world,
it's easy to distinguish a shoe store on Fifth Ave. in New York
City from a shoe store that's in a warehouse area. Place
defines how you do what you do-should customers expect to be on
their own or should they expect to have a lot of customer service?
This is an area where a lot of Web sites come up lacking because
they haven't defined the scope of what they're doing, who
they're doing it for, or how they're going about doing
it.

Entrepreneur.com: What are
the basic elements that should be included on a Web site?

Feiler: First you have to
figure out what you're trying to do. There's a whole list
of items that should be on each page including navigational tools.
A lot of Web sites have a navigation bar to take you to other pages
on the site. You should let visitors know who owns the site, the
copyright, all those things. I spend a lot of time talking about
the pros and cons of putting information such as last update on a
page because that's a two-edged sword. If your last update was
three months ago, in some cases, that's not going to be very
good. But if you're an organization that doesn't change
very often, three months is a pretty recent update. You have to
consider the pros and cons of everything you put on the page.

Entrepreneur.com: When the
site goes live, what do you need to remember as far as managing the
site and maintenance?

Feiler: The most important
thing you have to worry about is [something that occurs] before it
actually goes live. Most people usually start by figuring out what
it's going to cost to maintain their site. From page one of the
book through the end, I say don't do it that way. Work
backwards. Ask yourself what you can afford to do to maintain this
site. Am I going to maintain the site on Saturday mornings, or am I
going to have a staff of six people do it? Set out what you can
afford to do by way of maintenance and then design the site around
it.

You have to maintain the site because these things don't
take care of themselves. You have to check your links, check for
all the things that could go wrong with the site, especially sites
that are modified over time. One of the things I tried to do in the
book that I think is important is to let people know they're
not the first to put up a Web site and experience a problem such as
putting up a dead link. Get over it, fix it and figure out how to
avoid it in the future. Avoiding it in the future doesn't mean
checking the links every day. It probably means avoiding deep
links, which are the ones that break. I want people to know there
are steps you can take.

Entrepreneur.com: How much
do you really need to know technically as far as putting up your
site?

Feiler: What people really
need to know and usually skip are mission, scope and place, and
you're not going to get that from a consultant. I've seen
this in almost every Web fiasco. The problem isn't with HTML;
it's with the definition of the site and the fact that the
mission, scope or place was not defined or was misunderstood by
various people. It's the business side that's the problem.
Stop and think about what it is you want to do in a real business
sense before you play with the technology.